


gimme shelter

by loveleee



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fluff, Power Outage, Pre-Relationship, Season 1, Thunderstorms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 19:08:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17986928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveleee/pseuds/loveleee
Summary: “My mom would kill me if she knew what I was doing right now,” Betty muses, stacking the dry measuring cups on the counter before her.Jughead looks at her. “Washing dishes?”“Making junk food late at night. Eating it before bedtime.” She pauses. “Alone, with a boy.”(Early season 1 canon divergence. Jughead, Betty, a thunderstorm, and a power outage.)





	gimme shelter

There’s a light on at Betty’s house.

The roof of the projection booth at the Twilight is leaking, the Andrews aren’t home, and Jughead’s stranded outside in the middle of what is surely the worst thunderstorm to hit Riverdale in the last ten years…

But there’s a light on at Betty’s house.

Jughead stops in the middle of the sidewalk, hand hovering over the pocket of his jeans, where his phone is. He can’t decide what’s weirder: to knock on her door out of nowhere, or to call her first from outside her own house.

But the storm doesn’t give him a choice; lightning cleaves the sky above him, so close that the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. His feet squelch on the wet, perfectly manicured lawn as he sprints for the front stoop, and prays that Alice Cooper isn’t the one to answer the door.

Someone up there must hear his silent plea, because it’s Betty who peers around the edge of the door a few moments after he rings the doorbell, her eyes widening in some mix of shock and pity that sends heat creeping up the back of his neck.

_“Jughead?”_

“Can I come in?”

Betty steps aside immediately, throwing the door open to let him through, slamming it shut once he’s inside. “Oh my god. What happened?”

Crouching down, he moves to untie his boots first – he’s spent enough time around Betty’s mom lately that he knows she’ll skin him with her bare hands if he tracks mud through her house. “Fell asleep at the library,” he fibs, tugging one shoe off, then the other. “The bus home doesn’t run this late on the weekend, so I thought I’d crash at Archie’s…”

“…But him and his dad are in Chicago.”

“Yeah. I forgot.” It’s pretty much the only true part of his story, aside from the bus schedule. Jughead stands up, his sleeves dripping water onto the hardwood floor, and steels himself for the logical follow-up question:

_Why didn’t **your** dad pick you up?_

But Betty goes straight into caretaker mode. “Here. Give me your jacket.” Jughead shrugs it off and hands it over, and she stifles a laugh as it becomes clear that the flannel shirt underneath is soaked through, too. “God, Juggie, you look like you swam here in the Sweetwater. Do you want to take a shower?”

The answer is an unqualified _yes_ , but it strikes him as odd that neither of her parents have inquired after the knock at the door yet. “Um – are your parents home?”

“Nope.” Betty nods her head towards the kitchen, and he shuffles after her, trying not to leave a wet trail across the floor. She sets his jacket beside the sink and lifts one sleeve in both of her hands, twisting it into a tight loop. “They’re in the city overnight for some journalism thing.”

“So you just answered your door at night while you’re home alone in the middle of a massive thunderstorm? While there’s a _murderer_ running around?”

As he’s learned over the past several weeks of investigation, Betty Cooper has a lot of good instincts. Survival is not one of them.

“I looked out the window first. I was like, _ninety-eight_ percent sure it was you.” Betty frowns as she wrings out the bottom of the jacket. “Thank goodness I did. What were you going to do if I wasn’t home?”

Admittedly, Jughead’s own survival instinct leaves something to be desired, because the real answer to that question lies somewhere between _break into Archie’s toolshed_ and _wander the streets until I got hit by lightning._

“Called a cab,” he says, though the three dollars he’s got tucked into his wallet are not enough to get him all the way across town to his dad’s trailer, which is only marginally more welcoming than the Andrews’ shed.

Betty takes a step back from the sink, eyeing the jacket critically. He half expects her to hand it back over, lend him some cash for a taxi, and send him on his way. But she looks at him and says, “So. Shower?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Betty’s shower is wide and clean, with a pretty floral shower curtain, gleaming white tiles beneath his feet, and more varieties of body wash lining the wall than Jughead has ever seen outside of a CVS. He grabs the one that seems the most gender-neutral – a blue bottle claiming to contain a “fresh rain” scent, not that he needs any more of that – and tries to think about anything other than the fact that this is the one place in the entire house where Betty gets naked every single day of the week.

(Now that they’re actually friends again, he’s been doing a good job, he thinks, of suppressing any outward signals that might suggest he’s attracted to Betty. Because, as he’d realized about five seconds after agreeing to investigate the murder of Jason Blossom with her, he is.

Desperately.)

He mostly succeeds, at least until there’s a knock at the door, followed by the soft creak of it opening. “Jughead?”

“Yeah,” he calls back, fumbling with the bottle. There’s no way she can see him through the opaque shower curtain that hangs between them. Nonetheless, he feels exposed: he’s wet, and nude, and Betty is _in the same room as him._

“I’m going to leave some clothes for you on the counter, and I’ll put yours in the dryer so you can wear them back home in the morning.” There’s a pause, then: “Okay?”

It’s the first time that either of them has suggested Jughead stay the night – and though he knows deep down that Betty is a very kind person who would never send even the likes of Chuck Clayton or Cheryl Blossom back out into a raging thunderstorm, much less an actual friend – relief washes over him at her words, almost as soothing as the hot water falling from the showerhead.

“Okay,” he calls back, and stands there with shampoo in his hands until he hears the door click shut, Betty safely on the other side.

The clothes that Betty’s gathered for him are clearly her father’s, and ill-fitting in every sense of the word; ever since his ninth-grade growth spurt, he’s been a good three inches taller than Hal Cooper, and nowhere near as thick around the middle. Jughead ties the strings hanging from the waistband of the sweatpants as tight as they’ll go, pushes the sleeves of the thermal shirt up over his elbows so it’s not as obvious that they’d otherwise leave a solid inch of wrist exposed, and heads back downstairs.

Betty is seated at the dining room table, frowning down at their history textbook, a notebook and some highlighters scattered before her. She twists in her seat when he reaches the foot of the steps, and ducks her head, hiding her smile against her shoulder.

He points a finger at her. “No laughing. It was this or Polly’s old River Vixens uniform, I assume.”

“Or my mom’s ratty old robe that she wears when she’s hungover.”

Jughead snorts, and then steps closer, laying one hand on the back of Betty’s seat as he leans over her shoulder to peer at her schoolwork. A hint of the “fresh rain” scent hits his senses as he does, and though it’s probably just coming off of his own skin, there’s something oddly pleasing about the idea that Betty may have used the same body wash when she showered this morning.

He pokes her gently on the back with one finger. “Betty Cooper. Are you really studying for the history test already? It’s not until Wednesday.”

“Some of us don’t wait until the last minute to cram, Jughead Jones.” But she flips the textbook closed, sweeping the highlighters into a row that she stacks neatly on top of her notebook before standing to face him.

He shakes his head. “What would Veronica say if she knew this was how you were spending your Saturday night?”

“You’re one to talk.” At his blank look, Betty adds, “Falling asleep at the library?”

Oh, right. That. “Good thing Veronica couldn’t care less how I spend my weekends.” Jughead reaches up to tug at the edge of his beanie, only to realize too late that it’s absent from his head. “Hey, where’s my hat?”

“I tossed it in the dryer with your clothes.” Her mouth falls open. “Oh, is it going to shrink?”

“No, no,” Jughead rushes to assure her. “Just…feels weird. It’s like a second skin, or something.”

Betty reaches out a hand to brush aside a lock of damp hair that’s fallen over his forehead. Meeting her gaze, Jughead feels the slight tug all the way down to his toes.

“I don’t know if I’ve seen you without it before.” She lets her hand fall, taking a step back, mouth tilting into a ghost of a smile. “It’s only ten. Do you want to do something? We could watch something on Netflix, or play a board game, or…oh, I know. Are you hungry?”

“I know I’m barely recognizable right now,” he shakes one leg out for emphasis, the baggy sweatpants hanging off of his calf, “but I am Jughead. I’m always hungry. It’s my one character flaw.”

Betty giggles and pushes past him into the kitchen, sliding a few inches across the tiles on her socked feet. “My mom just bought more cocoa powder this week. We can make brownies.”

Jughead trails after her, watching from the edge of the room as she flits about the kitchen, pulling various jars and canisters from the cabinets lining the counters.

The way Betty had touched his hair back there…it probably meant nothing. But it lit something in him, something subtle, something simmering low in his belly.

_Confidence_ , some might call it.

He waits until she’s gathered her ingredients together on the center island to sidle up beside her, his elbow bumping against the soft skin of her arm. “Okay, chef. Put me to work.”

Betty presses two sticks of butter into his hands. “We need ten tablespoons, cut up into pieces so it’ll melt faster.”

By the time Jughead is done slicing the butter – a task he completes with what is probably too much exactitude, given how long it takes him – Betty already has all of the dry ingredients measured and mixed together. He hops up onto the kitchen island and watches as she melts the butter into the cocoa and sugar over the stove, then cracks a few eggs into the mixture before combining it all into a thick, dark, shiny batter he’s tempted to eat straight out of the bowl.

(Betty forbids it. But she does give him the wooden spoon to lick after the pan is in the oven, and safe from Jughead’s greedy fingers.)

She sets the timer on the stove and shoots him an approving smile as he starts to fill one of the empty bowls with water in the sink. For a few minutes they do the dishes in companionable silence – Jughead washing, Betty drying.

“My mom would kill me if she knew what I was doing right now,” Betty muses, stacking the dry measuring cups on the counter before her.

Jughead looks at her. “Washing dishes?”

“Making junk food late at night. Eating it before bedtime.” She pauses. “Alone, with a boy.”

Jughead loses his train of thought – or any train of thought, really – for so long that Betty has to reach over in front of him and shut off the tap. She gently pries the clean spatula he’d been mindlessly scrubbing out of his hands.

“Sorry,” he says, unable to elaborate any further.

Betty glances up at him, just long enough for him to register the flush high on her cheeks. “S’okay.”

Jughead clears his throat. “I didn’t know eating brownies with a _boy_ made the calorie count higher.”

Betty laughs. “I don’t know which part she’d be more worried about.”

An alarming sort of fluttering stirs somewhere below his navel as images flood his mind – of Betty, and himself, and the things they could be doing of which her mother would not approve.

(Baking is not one of them.)

Jughead feels like he’s walking on a tightrope: one wrong step, and it’ll all come crashing down. He thinks again of Betty’s fingers brushing against his hair.

_Confidence._

“That’s funny.” He scratches at the back of his neck, and flinches as cool water drips down past his collar: he forgot he still has the dishwashing gloves on his hands. “I can imagine about five thousand things to do on a Saturday night that are far less wholesome than baking brownies with Betty Cooper.”

Betty turns towards him, resting one hand on her hip. “Oh yeah?” she says. “Like what?”

Like ripping the rubber gloves off of his hands, backing Betty up against the counter, and kissing her senseless.

“Like…breaking into the liquor cabinet,” he says lamely. “Or investigating the murder of a maple syrup scion.”

Betty smiles. “She does love to tell me how _ghoulish_ our investigation is.”

Jughead swallows. Betty is _there,_ just a few inches away, smiling up at him like maybe, _maybe_ the things he’s been feeling these past few weeks – the thoughts he’s been having – aren’t completely one-sided. Like maybe if he touched her cheek and leaned in and kissed her right now, she wouldn’t pull away.

Like maybe she’d _like_ it.

But. There are still these stupid, wet gloves on his hands, and he’s not about to kiss Betty Cooper for the first time while dripping soap suds onto her kitchen floor. Jughead turns back to the sink, pulling one of the gloves off by the index finger, heart pounding as he prepares himself for what will either be the best or worst decision of his life.

And as he does, Betty walks away, shattering the moment.

God, he’s an idiot.

“We’ve got about thirty minutes before the brownies are done,” she calls from the living room, where she’s already turning on the television. “Let’s watch something.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jughead leaves a healthy distance between them when he flops onto the sofa beside her – a calculation he regrets when Betty throws him a strange, almost affronted look, and pulls a pillow into her lap.

They watch an old episode of _Parks and Recreation_ , saying little, and then let the next one play on, too. All the while, Jughead fidgets, tapping his toes against the soft carpet as the tantalizing smell of chocolate grows stronger every minute, and a million doubts run through his mind.

When the kitchen timer beeps, he nearly leaps off the sofa. Whatever it is that’s going on between him and Betty right now, a warm, gooey brownie or two (or three) should get them back to equilibrium.

“You have to let them cool first,” Betty warns, brushing past him to grab a potholder off of the counter. She pulls the pan from oven and inserts a toothpick into the middle, nodding in satisfaction when it comes out clean.

“How long does that take?”

“About half an hour.”

Jughead groans. “That’s years from now.”

Betty shows no sympathy. “If you touch them before I say so, I’ll…”

He waggles his eyebrows. “You’ll what? Punish me?”

“I was trying to think of something less creepy, but sure. Let’s go with that.” She turns away to place the potholder back in its drawer, but not before he glimpses her mouth twisting into a smile, something he notes with satisfaction.

A peal of thunder booms somewhere outside. Betty jumps as she shuts the drawer.

The lights flicker, and then everything goes dark.

“Shit.” She says it so plainly that Jughead has to laugh. “What? Why are you laughing?”

He feels a hand brush his bicep, tentative, fumbling at first and then firmer as Betty wraps her fingers around his arm. He cups his hand over her elbow and the other finds her hip; his heart is pounding, but at least he hasn’t accidentally grabbed her boob.

As his eyes begin to adjust he can just barely make out the shape of her standing before him, closer than they’ve ever been in the light. “You don’t usually swear. It’s funny.”

“That’s not true. Well – okay. But sometimes I fucking do,” she mutters, voice low in a way that makes his palms sweat.

Betty starts to move past him, her hands sliding along the kitchen island for guidance. “There’s a flashlight in the hall closet.”

It takes her a few minutes to retrieve it, and then another few to find a second flashlight for him to use. Jughead waits at the kitchen table, staring at what he thinks is the brownie pan on the counter, thankful that the soft growl in the pit of his stomach at least offers a distraction from his thoughts.  

When Betty returns with both flashlights in hand, she’s chewing on her lower lip, which he knows to mean that she’s mulling over something she’s unsure of.

“Everything okay?” Jughead asks. He tips his flashlight beneath his chin and makes a face, his chest warming when she laughs.

“Yeah. I was just thinking…let’s take the brownies upstairs. I have an idea.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jughead hasn’t been in Betty’s room since they were both in middle school, snacking on Twizzlers that Archie smuggled in from next door as all three of them worked on vocab homework together. But from what he can see in the thin beam of his flashlight, it’s almost exactly as he remembers it: overwhelmingly pink, with colorful posters and photos of her friends tacked up on the walls, and a mountain of throw pillows stacked atop a very fluffy-looking bed.

Betty leads him through the doorway and crouches down before one of her bookcases. She pulls a few books from the bottom shelf, holding one out to Jughead as she stands.

“Don’t laugh, but…Kevin was telling me about this horror movie he was watching where they figure out who the killer is because the guy shows up in the background of all these yearbook photos of the victims. And I’m not… _hey_.”

She stops when she sees Jughead’s growing smile, her mouth twisting as she suppresses a smile of her own. “I said no laughing. And I’m _not_ saying I think we’re going to find a bunch of blurry pictures with Dilton Doiley lurking around in the background of every water polo match. I just thought maybe looking through old yearbooks would spark some ideas, or give us a better sense of who was in Jason’s orbit.”

Even in the yellow glow of the flashlight, he can see that a charming flush has spread across Betty’s cheeks by the time she’s done explaining. Jughead wants nothing more than to cup her face in his palms, and feel her warm, soft skin against his fingertips.

Instead he flexes his fingers against the leathery, pebbled cover of the yearbook in his hands.

“I think it’s a good idea,” he admits. “But I also think Kevin needs to watch better movies.”

Betty laughs and then climbs up onto her bed. She scoots all the way to one side, patting the pillows next to her invitingly, and Jughead obliges, averting his eyes when his knee brushes her leg as he settles in.

It’s hard, though, _not_ touching her when she’s mere centimeters away, stretched out on the bed beside him, her shirt slipping up to reveal a strip of skin just above her hip.

Archie would touch her, he thinks with a sick lurch of his stomach. Trev Brown would, too. Reggie Mantle? No question.

But he is not those boys, Jughead reminds himself. And those boys are not sitting next to Betty Cooper on her bed right now, in a room lit only by the dim glow of their flashlights, no sound but the rain pounding against the windows, and the soft rustling of fingers on paper.

_He_ is.

They flip through the yearbooks for a few minutes, until Betty giggles and nudges him with her foot, tipping the page in her lap towards him. “Look.”

Her finger rests on a photo of Jughead and Archie in what looks to be the seventh grade, grinning up at the camera from their lunch table. Archie’s got a mouthful of braces, and Jughead’s hat is so big on his head that it looks like he’s possibly bald underneath.

“Wow.”

He glances up at her, but she’s staring down at the page fondly. “I always forget I used to be _taller_ than you guys,” she says.

Ignoring her mild hum of protest, Jughead tugs the book out of her lap and into his own, setting his flashlight down on the bed next to his leg. “There’s _got_ to be a tragically awkward photo of you in here somewhere.”

“Oh, god.” Betty leans closer to keep her flashlight trained on the page, her shoulder pressing against his arm. After a moment, she rests her chin lightly on his shoulder, her breath a warm puff against his cheek.

Jughead silently reminds himself to keep breathing, and pages through the book at a steady clip until a little blonde head in a blue beret catches his eye: 13-year-old Betty, treasurer of the Riverdale Middle School French Club. She’s flanked by Ethel and Nancy and Archie, all of them holding little French flags in their hands. It’s an awkward photo, but not tragically so. Out of all of them, Betty’s smile is the brightest. 

“Nope, you’re as cute as ever.” He shakes his head, flipping the yearbook shut. “Some things never change.”

She’s so near he can hear the slight catch in her breath.

By the time he dares to look at her, Betty’s lifted her chin from his shoulder, but kept close, close enough that even in the dark he can see the smattering of freckles on her nose, the stray eyelash on her cheek, the slight parting of her lips.

_(Confidence.)_

Jughead closes his eyes and cups her face with his hand, and kisses her.

Betty freezes, but only for a second; then she’s kissing him back, her hand coming to rest on his side, fingers curling against the fabric of his shirt. The kiss is soft and sweet and when it ends the tip of her nose brushes his, her breath a warm ghost against his mouth.

His chest feels like it’s collapsing as he lets out a long breath. When he finally opens his eyes again, everything is black; they’ve unadjusted to the lack of light.

“I really wish I could see your face right now,” he admits.

Betty’s hand moves from his ribcage to his neck, her thumb tracing along his jaw.

“I’m smiling, Juggie,” she says, and he can hear in her voice that it’s true.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the power comes back on, they’re sitting cross-legged in the middle of Betty’s bed, two forks and the half-eaten pan of brownies between them.

As soon as he sees her in the light, Jughead is unable to keep what he’s sure is a goofy grin from spreading across his face. Betty’s ponytail is messier than usual – probably from when they’d kissed a second time, and he’d woven his fingers through her hair as he cradled the back of her head – a realization that makes him ache to do it again.

Betty smiles back at him, but before he can lean forward and pull her in for a third kiss, she yawns. “Ugh, sorry.” She rubs at one of her eyes, and even in the small motion Jughead can see how tired she actually is.

“Let’s go to bed,” Jughead says, and then realizes what it sounds like he’s suggesting. Which he isn’t – sure, they’ve kissed twice, but he isn’t about to assume that means he already has a standing invitation to actually sleep in Betty’s bed with her. “Or I’ll just, y’know, take the couch.”

Betty pauses in the midst of gathering up the brownie pan, appearing to consider her words carefully. “That’s fine,” she says, “but my bed’s a lot comfier.”

By the time Betty slips under the sheets beside him, Jughead is pretty sleepy, too. She turns off her bedside lamp and presses a soft kiss to his cheek. Somewhere between them their hands brush one another, and he curls his fingers around hers, wondering already if they’ll fall asleep this way.

“I hope it stops raining,” she murmurs, already halfway to dreamland.

Jughead squeezes her hand. No matter what the morning brings, he knows he’ll be waking to nothing but sunshine.

**Author's Note:**

> \- oh, those Cooper parents. always out on the town, leaving their daughter alone in their empty house!
> 
> \- this was inspired by a fic prompt I came across on tumblr about 6 months ago: "“The bus broke down near your house, I know we’re not super close but I live three miles away and this storm is horrible, can i stay over?” AU". it just kinda screamed early-season-1 Bughead to me? so I'd say this is roughly set around 1x05 - before they kissed in canon, but not much before.
> 
> \- if you enjoyed it, please do take a moment to leave a comment, I greatly appreciate each and every one! <3


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